'Welcome to Anfield' - Stevie, turn here!!!

An appropriate adjective? A suitable superlative? A decent description? Basically, Steven Gerrard is staying at Anfield. Got in his vehicle, left Melwood training ground, was on his way either to London or the airport for Spain, saw the sign for Anfield, went round the roundabout and came back. Saw Rick Parry and said he wants to stay.

Yep. He wants to stay.

Incredible. That's one description.

I watched Sky Sports News as it broke the news and I found myself stunned again, practically fell onto the floor in bewilderment (sorry, neighbours!). The commercials were on and then Sky Sports returned, with the caption of 'Breaking News'. Mike Wedderburn and Alex Hammond delivered the stunner. Sky Sports then featured Anfield live, where their reporter Fraiser Dainton was approached by Rick Parry, and Dainton asked him what the latest was about Gerrard. Maybe prior to this it was said that there was some news on the matter and the chief executive will be speaking about it shortly. Parry then said Gerrard wants to stay. Dainton repeated Parry's words in some slight disbelief.

"The last 5 or 6 weeks have been the hardest as I believed the club didn't want me."

There may have been misunderstandings from both LFC and Gerrard as to where each other stood, they have both apologised to each other because, at the back of it all, they BOTH wanted the same thing. I'm still puzzled as to how LFC could emanate signs that they are not interested in him. Obviously, immaterial to what is or has been said or indicated, there should be no doubt that the club want Gerrard to sign. There isn't a club on earth who would have Gerrard as their contracted player and be slack in their manner as to indicate they are not interested in him staying, not one. Gerrard must have realised that. LFC would be suicidal to have shown any feelings in that way. With the rumour-mongering initially in Spain that he would be on his way there, the media reports, then the past 4-5 days resulting in his statement yesterday, the club were resigned to losing him, regardless of what they did.

I said before in a previous blog that he would be staying. I said today he proved me wrong. Now today he has proven me right. And I think he has proven properly, and I sincerely hope eternally, where his heart is.

"I'll be signing, maybe even today. I'd like it known there are no clauses......I've committed my long-term future and I want to end the speculation now."

That wants to be clear enough. No more of this indecisiveness. Now he is here to stay, thick and thin, because he wants to, not because he feels he has to. Something else that needs clearing up:

"Reports of bust-ups with the manager are complete nonsense."

Good. Another:

Parry [to Sky Sports Fraiser Dainton]: "....I think the language, to be fair, he had been using to us, even when...even when he said he was going...he...he never said 'I want to go', it was 'it's been so difficult', 'the last few days have been so difficult', 'I don't think I could come back', he never actually said 'I want to go'."

And one more:

Sky Sports' Dainton: "So onwards and upwards from here, and the likes of Chelsea and Real Madrid can forget it?"

Parry: "Absolutely."


Thank you. Now back to business. We look to be a club pinning our future hopes of success on one player, we are not. As I said, no club would want Gerrard to leave, and any sensible club wouldn't want to have a player at the club who doesn't want to. All efforts had been exhausted to persuade him to stay and he said no, and we had to resign to that and move on. People have said or thought that this would signal a downfall for Liverpool. We were said to be a one-man team with Michael Owen. I believe we would have proven to be not a one-man team with Gerrard.

Gerrard has also stated that SFX are blameless, they did that which he instructed them [Struan Marshall] to do.

Beating Chelsea, winning Champs League, hearing Gerrard wants to stay, is committed to signing for the club, suddenly hearing he wants to leave, and now today he wants to stay. After that, if I were to have a heart attack from us winning the title this coming season, it wouldn't hurt that much. As Shankley said:

"This is a team with skill and character, with men eager and ready to do any job if it's for the benefit of the club."

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

Now, from one solution to another. Total Network Solutions.


RedsMan.